Judicial Impartiality Questioned in Amending Errors in Immigration Court Notices to Appear
Foto del avatar Victor De la Flor Sep. 21, 2024 7:37 am
Notices to Appear (NTAs) are legal documents issued to non-citizens referred to immigration courts that seek relief in deportation proceedings in the United States.
According to U.S. Immigration Law (INA ยง 239(a)(1)), an NTA must include specific details, such as the date and time of the first hearing, indicating when the individual must appear before an immigration judge to present their case in the deportation process.
However, it has been observed in many cases that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responsible for issuing and delivering NTAs, does not coordinate with the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to obtain a hearing date and time. Instead, they proceed to issue and deliver NTAs to non-citizens (particularly those crossing illegally via the southern border) without any hearing date.
This issue has been highly debated in jurisprudence. In 2018 and 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the cases Pereira v. Sessions and Niz-Chavez v. Garland, respectively, ruled that an incomplete NTA cannot fulfill its legal purpose if it does not contain all the required information at the time of issuance. Then, in 2022, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), in the case Matter of Fernandes, held that an NTA lacking the date and time of a hearing constitutes a violation of mandatory claim processing rules. Earlier in 2024, in Matter of Aguilar Hernandez, the BIA further concluded that if an NTA lacks this information, the DHS cannot correct the violation by presenting an amendment or modification to the NTA.
https://gatewayhispanic.com/2024/09/judicial-impartiality-questioned-in-amending-errors-in-immigration-court-notices-to-appear/
